"""I wanted a happy culture. So I fired all the unhappy people."""
Very good for morale, there. Maybe companies could put some sort of electrocution-collar onto employees, and the moment they exhibit any sort of behavior that may or may not hinder the company, regardless of their life situation (they do have lives outside of work, but...should they?!?), they could simply be exterminated.
Discard those useless people, living their emotional human lives. Moneymoneymoney.
(a good boss will be able deal and work with all the behaviors listed in the article.)
I think there's more of a balance to be struck here. It's true people can be thrown for an emotional loop by their lives outside of work, and to persecute them for that will just make it worse. On the other hand, I have personally found that working with (and being around) depressed people is absolutely poisonous to my happiness and associated traits such as motivation and productivity.
Maybe that makes me selfish for wanting someone else to deal with the problem, but seriously. I don't want to deal with your problems. There are too many awesome people in the world that raise me up to heights to want to attach an anchor to my feet like that.
Yeah i get you, negativity can be infectious. But like i said, some bosses can deal with it well, some can't, but either way...firing people because of it is a silly solution.
Extremely polar article. Not every project goes up in smoke because someone thought they were doing it wrong. In fact, quite a few go up in smoke because nobody listened to the nay-sayers.
You need experience to know the difference between a naysayer, and someone who's spotted an upcoming train wreck. You also have to know that there is a difference, and that it's hard to spot.
If you fire the "nonbelievers", you punish those who speak truth to power. This is a recipe for managerial pet projects that end up unprofitable because any insufficiently enthusiastic employee input was punished.
That whole section reads like it was written by a cult leader or a "The Secret" author.
“Can you believe what they want us to do now? And of course we have no time to do it. I don’t get paid enough for this. The boss is clueless."
I hear this around the bullpen a lot lately. I don't think we have a group of victims whining around and complaining all day. These are competent senior engineers that want to do the best work possible given our resources and schedules.
Problem is, they're constantly interrupted by management asking for a sales demo for this customer, or a feature change for that customer. It's the lack of clarity and direction and project management that is frustrating the employees. And who owns that issue?
Firing those sort of people certainly seems to be the best way of ending up with an organisation full of yes men.
Unlike the article author, I think getting rid of the people that incessantly moan about rigid company policies, bluntly tell management their strategy sucks and god forbid actually claim to know things about their market is the perfect recipe for failing to spot the next Netflix/Google/telephone because nobody wanted to upset morale by raising it at the company's Praise Our Strategy session.
This is good advice, but it's dangerous for leaders who aren't themselves deep experts on their issues that divide their people. It hinges pretty strongly on a boss being the most discerning person at the table.
As all of the comments point out:
For 'victims', 'nonbelievers' and 'knowitalls', read 'defenders of the unpopular', 'visionaries' and 'pragmatists.'
How do you know which is which?
Easy: the boss should be a technical expert, as well as the most demanding user of the product. Such a boss will know when technical decisions are being made rationally and when they are being made for political reasons -- and thus evaluate whether a complaint comes from someone who sees themselves as a victim, or someone who sees something beneficial getting axed.
Such a boss will be able to recognize an earnest and appropriate expression of a compelling, competing vision, and differentiate it from a lack of buy-in. Why? Because he knows the technologies in question, and because he knows that "buy-in" always risks turning into a mindless "lock-in", and so it's useful to have contrarians on your team.
But, hey -- I'm preaching to the choir on HN. And I'd say there is some evidence that leadership is increasingly technical and expert in companies that are winning.
These kinds of decisions are always hard.
For non-technical people, making decisions about technical people, I have a suspicion that they'd do as well throwing darts at a board for all but the most blatant cases of personality misfit.
I've been in situations where the person who created the most value for his company was all three of those things: 'victim', 'non-believer' and 'knowitall'. All they cared about was the product, and it turns out that's the thing you want them to care about.
I would not criticize the authors of the article on the basis that they are most likely to fail. They want to make "a more innovative company" not a successful or even profitable company. Making people do things they don't know how to do is the making innovation by definition (i.e. discovering something new, even on the personal level). For example if you give chef's job to a programmer and programmer's job to a chef both will have to innovate to make the most trivial stuff. If your investors and or customers are happy with the innovation by itself and don't mind programmer's food and chef's code - knock yourself out I say.
Even better idea - fire everyone who is working now because they might have some clue what is that you are doing. Get some fresh people off the street without telling them anything, take innovation to the max (note to HR: hiring this way you might end up wit hiring somebody who actually knows how to do the job so you need to do background checks to ensure that the new hire has no previous knowledge of his or her future responsibilities).
I'm all for this-I got rid of negatives in my professional world and productivity went up tremendously. Teams work better when there isnt a toxic person holding everyone down.
Not only are those people on that list negative, but they suck other people into their black holes.
Now to get rid of these people in our personal lives, is much harder....
Wow. I read the article before and comments, and boy am I happy at the general sentiment. I too agree that this is an over-simplification of a much more complex dynamic, which in any case would be more alarming in terms of crappy management, than bad employees. Such a polarized view on firing people could only come from a ruthless self-centered suit.
21 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] threadVery good for morale, there. Maybe companies could put some sort of electrocution-collar onto employees, and the moment they exhibit any sort of behavior that may or may not hinder the company, regardless of their life situation (they do have lives outside of work, but...should they?!?), they could simply be exterminated.
Discard those useless people, living their emotional human lives. Moneymoneymoney.
(a good boss will be able deal and work with all the behaviors listed in the article.)
Maybe that makes me selfish for wanting someone else to deal with the problem, but seriously. I don't want to deal with your problems. There are too many awesome people in the world that raise me up to heights to want to attach an anchor to my feet like that.
You need experience to know the difference between a naysayer, and someone who's spotted an upcoming train wreck. You also have to know that there is a difference, and that it's hard to spot.
So much nicer when you just fire everyone who doesn't stroke your ego.
That whole section reads like it was written by a cult leader or a "The Secret" author.
I hear this around the bullpen a lot lately. I don't think we have a group of victims whining around and complaining all day. These are competent senior engineers that want to do the best work possible given our resources and schedules.
Problem is, they're constantly interrupted by management asking for a sales demo for this customer, or a feature change for that customer. It's the lack of clarity and direction and project management that is frustrating the employees. And who owns that issue?
The_Secret.txt
Unlike the article author, I think getting rid of the people that incessantly moan about rigid company policies, bluntly tell management their strategy sucks and god forbid actually claim to know things about their market is the perfect recipe for failing to spot the next Netflix/Google/telephone because nobody wanted to upset morale by raising it at the company's Praise Our Strategy session.
1) People who never think anything is wrong. 2) People who will believe anything. 3) People who don't care about facts.
... success!
As all of the comments point out:
For 'victims', 'nonbelievers' and 'knowitalls', read 'defenders of the unpopular', 'visionaries' and 'pragmatists.'
How do you know which is which?
Easy: the boss should be a technical expert, as well as the most demanding user of the product. Such a boss will know when technical decisions are being made rationally and when they are being made for political reasons -- and thus evaluate whether a complaint comes from someone who sees themselves as a victim, or someone who sees something beneficial getting axed.
Such a boss will be able to recognize an earnest and appropriate expression of a compelling, competing vision, and differentiate it from a lack of buy-in. Why? Because he knows the technologies in question, and because he knows that "buy-in" always risks turning into a mindless "lock-in", and so it's useful to have contrarians on your team.
But, hey -- I'm preaching to the choir on HN. And I'd say there is some evidence that leadership is increasingly technical and expert in companies that are winning.
These kinds of decisions are always hard.
For non-technical people, making decisions about technical people, I have a suspicion that they'd do as well throwing darts at a board for all but the most blatant cases of personality misfit.
I've been in situations where the person who created the most value for his company was all three of those things: 'victim', 'non-believer' and 'knowitall'. All they cared about was the product, and it turns out that's the thing you want them to care about.
Even better idea - fire everyone who is working now because they might have some clue what is that you are doing. Get some fresh people off the street without telling them anything, take innovation to the max (note to HR: hiring this way you might end up wit hiring somebody who actually knows how to do the job so you need to do background checks to ensure that the new hire has no previous knowledge of his or her future responsibilities).
Not only are those people on that list negative, but they suck other people into their black holes.
Now to get rid of these people in our personal lives, is much harder....
Wasn't that a Monty Python skit? Only, instead firing the unhappy people he had then hanged by the neck until they cheered up....